


He Wasn't There Again Today

by PhoenixDragon



Series: I Wish, I Wish Series [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dark, Gen, Hallucinations, PTSD, Psychological Horror, References to Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, post trf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-19 01:41:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixDragon/pseuds/PhoenixDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There isn’t/wasn’t/hasn’t been anyone at the door. Not for a couple of hours. Maybe there never had been.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Wasn't There Again Today

The hours stretch, sticky in a cold-warm way like a spider’s web and he thinks slow and struggling within it.

The alcohol sits thick, heated and nauseating in his belly and as tension crawls and cramps his shoulders, he imagines it beating through his veins, filtering through his liver and kidneys. His bladder twinges in response, but he ignores it, wills it away with a fierceness that tastes like surprise behind his teeth.

It is 3am.

The shadows fit long and slender like fingers through the reaches of his flat, falling hollow and pale within the corners, dark meeting darkness and it clashes into a pool of empty beyond his sight.

There isn’t/wasn’t/hasn’t been anyone at the door. Not for a couple of hours. Maybe there never had been.

His fingers had hovered over his phone, wanting to text the Shadow that had spilled so completely into his life before melting away in the pavement beneath his ‘ _Oh God_ ’ and ‘ _Oh no_ ’ and ‘ _Sherlock_ ’ – the startling presence of The Man at the door so _real_ he thought maybe he could touch him through the lines of communication…

Then he remembered.

He stomach cramped, his bladder protested, but he sat in the absence of light in his furnished flat that wasn’t home, counting the shadows within to eat at the memory of the Shadow without…and he waited.

He waited for the Shadow to appear again, willing the lack of illumination spilling from his windows to call it forth again – but whether he would punch it, kiss it, dismiss it, question, scream or start laughing madness into the serene nothingness of his neighborhood, he couldn’t say.

His gun was warm-cold against his fingers, sweat layering into the deep grooves of the grip, seeping his essence into the metal in a way mere ownership never could. They were old friends, this gun and him.

The Browning was what he carried away from Afghanistan and it had almost carried him away (once) not too long after Sherlock spilled away into the ground and away from him.

It was warm-cold then, too, and he was thinking ‘ _I had just found me, by losing whatever I was into_ him _and he has ripped me away from this world._ ’

He had thought ‘ _Completeness, an end of an equation, the finis to a musical composition_ ’ – wondering if the deep chuckle in the back of his mind that had been Sherlock and home and friendship was actually there, even as he knew Sherlock would have frowned on the sentiment of it all.

‘ _So_ dramatic _, John._ ’ He would have said, that frown bracketing his mouth, even as his hands would have risen to circumvent/punctuate his words. ‘ _I do like the sense of finality, everything neatly rounded out – but the romanticism is wholly inappropriate and quite beside the_ point.’

‘ _Exactly,_ ’ John had thought, frowning himself as he had tucked his wartime friend under his jaw and –

His phone had buzzed.

Of all things, his phone had buzzed and he had a moment of ‘ _Bugger it all_ ’ and ‘ _Oh,_ honestly’ before picking it up and laughing even as tears that he chose to ignore streaked down his face, because of all people, it had been _Mycroft_.

Mycroft _Fucking_ Holmes.

Of course.

The man who had quietly led Sherlock up to the ledge without even being there –

 _his own brother and_ ‘caring is not an advantage’ _and fake smile and sharp lapels and_ ‘Tell him for me, would you?’

had just stopped John from completing the equation and really, even Mycroft might have been amused at that.

John had deleted the record of the call, turned off his phone and put the Browning back in a drawer in his new flat, ignoring it; the moment was over, the time was passed, the problem unsolved.

It would have been wrong, to do that in his new flat, anyway…but he couldn’t/wouldn’t/hadn’t thought about doing this finish, this beginning of letting go in the biggest way possible at 221B. Mrs. Hudson would never had been able to rent it out again.

He drew no irony, no chuckle from the words or thoughts along those lines until days later: but the laughing had been more like crying and he stopped, afraid in a small way that he didn’t dare to express.

The way he was thinking now, actually.

 _Exactly_ as he was thinking it.

The Dark hummed to itself contentedly – easily in the early am quiet. John thumbed the slanted grooves of the barrel in absent attentiveness, the pressure of blinking like an ache against his cheeks and he breathed in air that was stale from a living presence that hadn’t really been alive except for eighteen months over nine months ago.

Nine months and he had yet to be reborn. Maybe madness was his birthing to his new place on the skin of this world, but he wasn’t yet sure in that idea, and the liquid darkness curling in the corners beside his new/used fridge didn’t yield any answers as he breathed (now unblinking) into the shifting light-shadows of his sparse living room.

He wasn’t sure yet about a lot of things. He was unsure if he was still alive, though his heart beat as it always had and his lungs drew in and expelled air –

_Breathing is boring_

as they had always been designed to do and really, what was the fucking _point_ if you couldn’t stop these things from happening? The human body was stupid in the fact that it struggled to survive even when such small things as points and understanding and contact were gone. It fought to survive even when the living was over and-and there should be a fucking _switch_ –

His breathing had become labored and he fought to control it, the metal of the Browning creaking uneasily in his palm, against the crimp of his fingers. He breathed and tried to imagine Baker Street (221 B) the living room of their/his/Sherlock’s flat sliding into the empty spaces of where he was now – a game he preferred to play when no Shadows burned their presence outside of his door and…and maybe he should just open it and let it come.

He thrilled at that thought – mouth dry with the possibility of opening the door and letting Madness walk in like it owned the place – but why _not_? It already was perfectly comfortable in the confines of his mind –

 _honestly, it must be so_ boring _in your tiny little minds_

why not let it breathe in the same space that he couldn’t breathe in?

John let the idea settle across the aching scream of his shoulders, the last three drinks he had singing in his blood and hammering at his bladder.

Then he stood up.

He put the Browning in his desk drawer, ignoring the dusty closed mouth of his laptop. He rolled the drawer closed, a scrape of sound too loud against the thudding in his ears and the whoosh of air in his lungs, and the still, still chuckling quiet of the shadows pooled in the empty darkness in the corners of this place that could never be, never has been Home.

Home bleed away after ‘ _Stop it_ ’ and ‘ _No._ ’ and he couldn’t think beyond that anymore.

He hadn’t been able to think beyond that in the nanoseconds it all happened in, if he was honest with himself – and he often was. It was an inherent character trait that had gotten him promoted in ranks and sighed at loudly by the one being who gave him reason, then tore it away with ‘ _I’m a fake._ ’

His throat clicked drily as the fridge chuckled in black counterpoint to his thinking…his thinking that wasn’t really thinking –

_You’re an idiot…don’t be like that, most everybody is_

and swiveled on one heel to face the Door.

The Man (the Shadow?) had burned him/itself against the wood, seeping into the disused spaces of a sad flat that had seen better days. The other side of the door would taste sharply of excitement and drama and horror and Alive. Because even though it wasn’t (He wasn’t) real, madness always tastes fresh in the wee hours before the day. Because it was as _inevitable_ as day coming to spill into night (before bleeding back to day again). Because the Browning (his old and faithful friend from War and war), just wasn’t _enough_ anymore.

John Watson let out a steady breath and with a hand that was also steady –

_You should fire her…_

he opened the door.  


**Author's Note:**

>  **Warning, Author's Notes & Disclaimer(s):** _To be found at the First Part._


End file.
